


Follow Your Gut

by carryonstarkid



Category: Gallagher Girls Series - Ally Carter
Genre: Baby Cammie, Gen, Joseph "Sob Story" Solomon, Rome and other atrocities to the Morgan family, Sad Matt Musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26592085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carryonstarkid/pseuds/carryonstarkid
Summary: Matt's always giving Joe parenting advice, until he's not.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Follow Your Gut

**Author's Note:**

> Anon Request: do you still take gallagher girl requests? i would love if u wrote about joe asking matt for parenting advice... or both of them talking about raising young cammie (before attending the gallagher academy) and young zach

Joe has seen Matthew Morgan scale a Ukrainian mountainside, fire a sniper from the rooftop of a Columbian embassy, and bash in the skull of an especially roguish looking KGB agent who, at the time, had been aiming a pistol at Abby. They had been partners during a high-speed chase through Rio and he had once heard a story about Matt’s dive below the canals of Venice in an attempt to plant an undetectable detonation device below the _Ca' d'Oro_. 

As such, it’s a little jarring to see him with a three-week-old newborn in his arms.

Although it should come as no surprise that Matt—naturally and endlessly talented Matt—should take to fatherhood just as easily as he takes to everything else. He is the definition of adaptable. The pinnacle of patience. He holds Cameron in his arms as though she’s always been there and as though she always will be. 

“You know, Joe,” he says, in a voice that's softer than usual. “Most people come in through the front door.”

Joe leans his shoulder into the doorway of a nursery that he’s never seen before, painted in purples and blues with more frills than even a trained agent can count. “Old habits.”

When Matt turns, he’s got a rock to his step and a bounce to his arms. He fusses at her blanket with the kind of precision that one might come to expect from a trained marksman, although it gives way to an innate tenderness that has always seemed to define his personhood. He’s shushing, and smiling, and doing everything right. The sway sinks into his every move as he takes one, two, three steps towards the crib. He lays her down, and it occurs to Joe that he’s seen Matt defuse bombs with less care. 

He doesn’t look up when he says, “It’s about time you showed up.” He simply watches her like he can’t look away. Like he doesn’t want to. “She’s been waiting to meet you.”

Joe has been in Havana. And in Moscow. And in Vatican City. He’s been pretty much anywhere except Washington D.C. “Figured it was best to wait,” he says. “You had enough to worry about without trying to explain the strange man skulking around the hospital hallways to your family.”

“I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this,” says Matt, as he pulls the side of the crib into place. Finally, he looks up, but he doesn’t move. There’s still one arm hanging into her bed. “But you don’t actually _have_ to skulk.”

Joe laughs, because of course he does. Because of course, even with bags under his eyes and stains on his shirt, Matt’s still got this way of making Joe laugh. “No,” he says. “Guess I don’t.”

Matt’s smiling, because Matt’s always smiling. "Come meet her, Joe,” he says. “She ain’t gonna bite.”

A deep down hesitation rises to the surface as his instincts scream out. For whatever Matt has done in his time, Joe’s done far worse, and a guy like him has no business being around babies. It’s a truth that he’s known for nine months and probably long before—it’s not going to be Rachel, Matt, and Joe anymore. It needs to be Rachel, Matt, and Cameron.

Matt hasn’t seemed to figure that part out yet. Or if he has, he’s doing a damn fine job of ignoring it. He’s always had a blindspot when it came to Joe.

“Joe?”

“Yeah,” he says, and he takes a step forward.

Matt’s still smiling. “Gonna have to get a little closer than that, Joseph.”

“I don’t want to wake her up.”

“That’s not how babies work.”

“Sure.” He’s out of excuses. Either he says hello, or he risks blowing whatever years-long cover he’s stumbled into that’s got Matt convinced he’s such a good guy. And he can’t lose Matt, so it’s not really much of an option.

She’s even smaller than he expects, all wrapped and tucked in Matt’s careful swaddle. Joe’s never seen anything so peaceful, save a stagnant lake on a Sunday morning. Or maybe a sunset over Soviet mountaintops. She’s perfectly at rest. At ease. To her, nothing in existence is evil and no one in world is wicked.

Her little mouth lets out a big yawn as she squirms and stretches against her blanket. She scrunches her nose first, and squeezes her eyes, and there’s just a little, barely-there fuss. It’s enough to send Joe’s stomach turning, as though he’s done something wrong. As though she’s sensed something terrible about him. He realizes with a panic that he has no idea what to do if her fussing turns to tears.

But Matt’s already on it, with a round green pacifier at the ready. He helps her to it, each of them putting up a fight, until she’s back to serenity, sucking herself to sleep. All of it’s over before Joe even realizes what’s happening.

It’s all he can do to shake his head. “How do you do that?” he says. “Three weeks in and you’re already a pro.”

Matt’s still got one finger on the pacifier. “Babies don’t let you do the wrong thing,” he says. “They’ll just cry until you get it right.”

“But how do you even know what the right thing is?”

“How do you know when the Spanish ambassador is lying about his guards’ shifts?” Matt asks. “Or when to complete a brush pass?”

He lets go of Cameron, now, in a slow, steady sort of way that one might back away from a knife. When he does successfully pull his hand away, Matt lets out a relieved breath, and Joe gets to thinking about how maybe espionage and parenthood aren’t so different after all.

“You’ve just got to follow your gut, Joe.” He looks back up, and Joe suspects that the threat of wickedness evades Matt just as easily as it evades his daughter. “You ought to know—you’re the one who taught me how to do it.”

* * *

Cameron is five now, and though precocious she may be, able-to-open-her-own-juicebox she is not. It is for this reason and no other that Joe will be spending his next three nights on the Morgan household sofa, as Rachel and Matt take off towards Milan with briefs written out on evapopaper. 

It has absolutely nothing to do with the lead that Matt received from a defecting Circle member based out of Athens.

“You’re my hero, Joe.” Matt’s got an armful of overnight bags for the pair of them. Once upon a time, he and Joe had lived for a month out of a single backpack, and now his life overflows from his elbows. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to find a babysitter who can shoot a sniper with deadly aim should the situation call for it.”

It seems strange to hear Matt call him a hero when, in fact, Matt is the one chasing down Joe’s childhood trauma out of sheer force of will, but that’s not really the kind of thing that they say to one another. Instead, it’s, “Not _that_ surprised, I don’t think.”

Matt shuffles the bags back up into his chest before they inevitably start to droop again. “No, probably not.”

The foyer is dark, aside from the glare of idle headlights that shine in through the window. In the morning, Cameron will wake up to find that her parents have gone. She and Joe will share a codeword provided by Matt, and then they’ll share breakfast, and then Joe has no idea what they’ll do for an entire three days. 

Matt’s always been good at figuring out exactly what people are thinking. “She’ll be in school for two of the days,” he says. “On Saturdays, she likes to go to the park. You push her on the swings, and you’ll have her heart for the rest of the weekend.”

“Matt, are you sure—?”

“Rachel wrote out everything on the legal pad in the kitchen.”

“I saw that legal pad,” Joe says. “There were seven bullet points on it, and a recipe for shrimp parm.”

“Yeah, she’s still working on the shrimp parm,” he says, with a regrettable tone in his voice. “But she’ll get there.”

She will not, in any capacity, _get there_. They both know it, but neither of them dares to say it. She may already be in the car, but Rachel Morgan hears all, sees all, and knows all. “Speaking of,” Matt says. “I’ve kept her waiting long enough.”

“Matt, I don’t think—”

“Don’t go backing out on me now, Joe,” he says, like he already knows what Joe’s about to say. And, of course, that’s because he _does_ know. He can always tell. “You’re gonna be fine. Cammie’s gonna be fine. You’re both going to be fine.”

“She goes by Cammie now?”

“She’ll go by whatever you call her, Joe. She’s five.”

“I don’t want to offend her—”

“I have seen you fight seven KGB agents on your own,” Matt says, perhaps a little too loudly for the lateness of the hour. “You have commanded national intelligence task forces since age twenty, you have jumped from the top of the Taj Mahal, and you once swam from Michigan to Canada with your hands _literally_ tied behind your back.”

Matt’s always been extremely generous about Joe’s list of accomplishments, especially given that among them is his large-scale betrayal to the CIA, thirteen violations of the Geneva Conventions, and no small number of kills. But Matt doesn’t need to be reminded of any of this before leaves his daughter with Joe for three long days.

“So don’t tell me,” Matt goes on, “that Joe Solomon is afraid of a kindergartner. I just won’t believe you.”

The lights flash once. Twice. Rachel’s ready to go, and Matt’s never been one to keep that particular woman waiting. Joe knows he has to go, but he wishes that he could stay. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

At this, Matt only laughs. He opens the door with a clumsy turn and calls over his shoulder. “Me neither,” he says. “None of us do. Just follow your gut and you’ll do fine.”

“Matt—” But the door clicks shut, and the silence moves into the space. Soon, even the lights are gone, so Joe locks the door. And then he locks it again, because his gut tells him to.

* * *

"Rachel’s talking about the Gallagher Academy.”

Rome has never felt right without Matt in his ear. Sometimes he’ll fly out for lunch or he’ll take a solo mission, but it never lines up the way it should. There’s something about Joe on a balcony with an espresso and a sniper, and Matt on the streets among a romantic crowd—it feels like where they’re supposed to be. “It’s a good school.”

Matt’s voice is crisp in his earpiece, his words alive with the knowledge that no one around him is listening. “I know it’s a good school,” he says. “I’ve seen the girls in action, just the same as you have.”

Joe takes a cool sip of steaming espresso, admiring the city lights in the warm breeze. “I should hope so, we’ve only been working with them for twenty years.”

He’s got eyes on Matt, but it’s the kind of thing that takes focus. Matt was already a better-than-average Pavement Artist when he first started at the CIA, and time has only helped hone the skill. “It’s not really a question of how good the school is.”

Joe loses him for a moment, but then spots him again. “Then what is it a question of?”

Matt’s somehow got a cannoli in his hand now, and Joe just rolls his eyes. “I dunno,” he says, cheek obviously stuffed. “I think I’m worried about what _kind_ of school it is.”

“A boarding school?”

“A spy school.”

It’s the sort of thing that probably shouldn’t be said out loud in front of fifty or so strangers, but Joe knows better than to doubt Matt’s ability to go undetected. “It’s not technically a spy school.”

“Right,” Matt says. “And I’m not technically a farmer, but I sure know how to birth a calf.”

“You know I can’t follow your farm metaphors.”

“All I’m saying,” Matt strains, his words long, “is that you can’t change where you grow up. The lessons you learn at that age are the lessons that stick with you. Isn’t seventh grade a little young to be wrapped up in all this?”

Matt swings by the cut-out and makes an effortless drop. Joe’s seen a lot of good spies in his day, and he wonders how a boy from Nebraska somehow became the best. “Seventh grade is when I made my first kill,” he offers.

Joe can see Matt stop, in a way that he never does in a crowd, and he stares dead on at Joe’s balcony from a distance. “Yes,” he says. “And that did you a lot of good, didn’t it?”

“You’ve got me there,” Joe says with a chuckle. “Only led me down a path of destruction—death, drugs, and so much pasta that you start to get sick of it.”

“I’m serious Joe.”

“So am I. Does your stomach not want to explode at the thought of another _mostaccioli_?”

“I’m trying to have an honest conversation with you—”

“Cammie is smarter than I ever was at ten,” Joe says, leaning back in his patio chair. “And the Gallagher Academy _isn’t_ Blackthorne.”

Matt’s stare lingers for just a little bit too long before he starts on the move again. Blond-brown hair blends so easily within the crowd, his actions effortless. Before he knows it, Joe’s lost him and he doesn’t hear Matt’s voice again until it’s really in his ear this time, just at his back. “I just worry about her.”

Joe turns, looks up at one of the only people he’s ever loved. “I know you do.”

“This Dad stuff,” he says. “It’s really hard.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Joe stands, disarms his weapon, and lands a pat on Matt’s shoulder. “But someone once told me it’s all about following your gut. So what’s your gut say?”

If Matt is annoyed by the use of his own words against him, he does a pretty good job of hiding it. “My gut says you’re right,” he says. “We shouldn’t order pasta tonight.”

“Is that the only thing I’m right about?”

“No,” Matt says. “You’re also right about Cammie being smarter than you.”

“Matt.”

“I’ll think about it, Joe,” he says. “She’s only ten. Me and my gut have plenty of time to think about it.”

* * *

His gravesite is in Nebraska, close to his parents.

Joe thought about stopping by the ranch. He always thinks about stopping by—the ranch, the school, Rachel. There’s so much he wants to say, and yet there’s never any words. It all sits in a knot at the center of his chest, and he has no idea how to start untangling. 

They got him a headstone. White. Simple. He won’t get a star in Langley’s lobby, and he won’t have a site in a national cemetery. He’s not even dead. Not really. “I need your help.”

The worst thing about talking to Matt these days is that Joe can hear what he _would_ say. His words are in his ear, just as they once lived in a comms unit. It would be an _anything_ or a _say the word_ or an _of course_. Without so much as a hesitation, Matt would have been there for him.

Joe still can’t believe he was sitting at a desk.

“I’ve got this kid,” he says, pushing the thought away. Then, he catches himself. “ _Got him_ , christ, listen to me. He’s not a dog. He’s—well, he’s Cammie’s age, and he reminds me of myself, back when I was stupid.”

This is when Matt would proceed to tell him that he is, in fact, still quite stupid. Joe might be inclined to agree. The thought brings a sting to his eyes, because somehow Matt’s ghost makes Joe miss him more. When he’s away, Joe can miss him in the abstract, but when he’s up close he misses the details. The jokes, and the touches, and the _words_. He just misses Matt’s words.

“He’s hurting, Matt,” Joe says, and he clears his throat. “He’s lost. And I think I’ve got to help him. I think it’s got to be me.”

Joe’s not sure when he became the type of person to take on another person’s heart. He suspects it was about the same time Matt first walked into his life. “Dad’s long gone. Mom’s... well, he’d be better off if she left too. And he’s just _looking_ for something to be a part of. That’s a dangerous place for someone like him to be.”

He’s often wondered what might have happened, had he and Matt gone to school together. If Joe had found even one person to love before he found the Circle. He wouldn’t have needed it so badly—wouldn’t have compromised himself or fallen for their charm. Malice is not the enemy of good; loneliness is, and Joe can sense it on the boy from a good mile away.

“I’m gonna help her, too.” The words fell out of his mouth before he even knew he was saying them. “I don’t know how. I don’t know...”

But of course, he does know. Because Matt’s voice is there with the answer. Matt always has the answers. 

“Yeah,” Joe says. “I know. Follow my gut. But that’s never been fair, Matt. Your gut’s always been better than mine.”

But Matt doesn’t answer. Because Matt isn’t there. 

It’s another voice entirely that calls out his name. “Joe.”

When Joe turns, he sees her, all wrapped up in a long red jacket. Rachel looks older than he remembers, but then, it’s been a while. The last time they spoke, Joe was delivering some bad news, and he hasn’t been able to face her since. “Rachel?”

She’s keeping her distance, and Joe can’t blame her. If she gets too close, she might hear his voice. So instead, she stays about three rows back, somehow both resolute and uncertain at the same time. “I need to call in a favor.”

And maybe it’s Matt. Or maybe it’s luck. Or maybe it’s that long red coat cinched tight around her waist. But Joe feels a flutter in his gut and he knows, beyond all doubt or reason, that he has to follow her.


End file.
